Geometry & Topology Monographs

Volume 7: Proceedings of the Casson Fest

This volume contains papers on a wide range of topics in low-dimensional
topology. It arose out of two events that were held in 2003. The first was the
28th University of Arkansas Spring Lecture Series in the Mathematical Sciences,
which took place April 10-12, 2003. These annual conferences focus on a
specific topic of current interest in mathematics, and feature a principal
lecturer who gives a series of five lectures and selects additional invited
speakers. In 2003 the principal lecturer was Andrew Casson, and the title of
his lecture series was "The Andrews-Curtis and the Poincare Conjectures". The
invited speakers were Stephen Bigelow, Martin Bridson, Danny Calegari, Nathan
Dunfield, Cameron Gordon, Alan Reid, Martin Scharlemann, Zlil Sela, and Peter
Shalen. A special public lecture was given by Jeff Weeks. There were also
several contributed talks. The organizers were Chaim Goodman-Strauss and Yo'av
Rieck. The conference was supported by NSF Grant DMS-0245047 and by the
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and
Graduate School of the University of Arkansas.

The second event was the Conference on the Topology of Manifolds of Dimensions
3 and 4, held at the University of Texas at Austin, May 19-21, 2003, in honor
of the 60th birthday of Andrew Casson. Invited lectures were given by Danny
Calegari, Bob Edwards, Mike Freedman, Dave Gabai, Rob Kirby, Greg Kuperberg,
Darren Long, Peter Ozsvath, Andrew Ranicki, Ron Stern, Peter Teichner, Kevin
Walker, and Terry Wall. The organizing committee consisted of Cameron Gordon,
Bob Gompf, John Luecke and Alan Reid. The conference was supported by NSF Grant
DMS-0229035 and by the Department of Mathematics of the University of Texas at
Austin.